Tom Tiffany fails Wisconsin history

The Cap Times is an independent newsroom. Sign up for the Opinion Roundup newsletter for weekly Madison and Wisconsin viewpoints. Tom Tiffany won't get accused anytime soon of being overly familiar with Wisconsin history. But Donald Trump's nominee for governor really leaned into his ignorance last week. In Washington, where he serves as a rubber-stamp supporter of the president's chaotic agenda, Tiffany cast an enthusiastic vote last week for a symbolic House resolution that 'condemns and denounces socialism in all its forms.' That was a strange vote coming from a Wisconsinite, as this state has a rich heritage of electing socialists and of incorporating socialist ideas into governing. Wisconsinites know they don't have to be members of the Democratic Socialists of America — which has seen a number of its candidates elected in the state — nor embrace socialism as an ideology in order to respect the contributions socialists have made to this state. The state's greatest Republican governor, Robert M. La Follette, struck the balance long ago. La Follette was not a socialist, but when he ran for the presidency in 1924 — as a progressive populist who carried Wisconsin and won almost 17% of the vote nationally — he welcomed the support of the Socialist Party and its dynamic national leader, Eugene Victor Debs. As Wisconsin's governor and senator, La Follette worked closely with legislators elected on the ballot line of the state's robust Socialist Party, which in the first decades of the 20th century often formed the second largest caucus — with fewer members than the Republicans but more than the Democrats — in the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate. Wisconsin Socialists were elected to Congress. Socialists served as city attorneys and county sheriffs, and dozens were elected as members of school boards, city councils and county boards. From Manitowoc to Racine, union-aligned socialists served as mayors of the state's great industrial cities. And, of course, between 1910 and 1960, Milwaukee elected three of the most prominent Socialist Party mayors in the nation's history. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani does not point overseas when he speaks about the roots of his democratic socialist vision. He points to Milwaukee. 'We are hardly the first socialists to embrace good governance,' the 34-year-old Mamdani told a crowd of cheering New Yorkers in April. 'One hundred and ten years ago, the city of Milwaukee elected a mayor named Daniel Webster Hoan. Hoan was considered young for the job — only 35 years old when he took office. I know — crazy, right? More importantly, Hoan made no apologies for being a socialist.' Recounting the remarkable story of the longest-serving socialist mayor of a large American city, Mamdani recalled: 'Mayor Hoan knew then what we know now: The worth of an ideology can only be judged by its delivery. As Emil Seidel, the socialist mayor who came before Hoan, once said, their entire governing philosophy was simple: 'Go after it and get it.' Under Mayor Hoan, Milwaukee built the greatest public park system in the nation and weathered the Great Depression better than almost any other American city. Under Mayor Hoan, Milwaukee purged corruption and graft, built the first municipally sponsored public housing development in the nation, and transformed the city's sewage disposal system. He believed, just as we do, that to deliver this great society, we should tax the rich. Today, we know these leaders as the 'sewer socialists.' But for years, Milwaukeeans knew them simply as leaders who delivered.' While Tom Tiffany is busy denouncing socialism 'in all its forms,' Zohran Mamdani recognizes Wisconsin's socialist heritage — as do Wisconsinites who respect the whole of this state's remarkable history. John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times. jnichols@captimes.com and @NicholsUprising. Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.